Royal Oak gun shop halts sale of Muslim targets

ROYAL OAK — Target Sports is no longer selling a shooting target that depicts a skeleton with a long beard wearing a turban and robe and carrying an AK-47.

The director of a Muslim civil rights groups said he confronted the store owner after he learned about the product in a complaint from a constituent.

“I decided to pay the shop a visit and I saw the target on a wall and purchased two copies,” said Dawud Walid, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) of Michigan.

Walid said he then introduced himself to the owner, Ray Jihad, and talked about how the target could incite violence.

“I expressed my concerns that it’s not just offensive but a person who shoots at a target like that might see a Muslim and look at that person as a hostile enemy,” Walid said. “He promised to stop selling them. It was that simple.”

Walid lauded the decision in a newsletter for the Southfield-based, non-profit group.

“We welcome the decision of Target Sports to discontinue selling such targets, which could have the effect of perpetuating misconceptions that Muslims, in particular those wearing certain attire, are to be viewed as a threat that should be eliminated,” he wrote.

Troy attorney Shereef Akeel, a member of the CAIR legal advisory board, also complimented Jihad and said he hopes other gun range owners follow his lead.

“What he did is great, great news,” Akeel said. “That’s an expression of social responsibility. It’s the prudent thing to do. He recognized those targets perpetuate hate and could create a divide. While we are having this national gun debate why put more gasoline on the fire by selling something that makes a group a target for shooting.”

The target is distributed by an Ohio-based company called Thompson Target, which also carries products called “Redneck Zombie” and “Wall Street Zombie.” Walid said he called that business and asked them to stop making the target depicting Muslims.

“I had a spirited conversation with a family member of the owner,” Walid said. “He told me we’re at war and we were trying to kill Osama bin Laden. I told him there are people here who may dress that way and they aren’t like Osama bin Laden. I hope I can convince them to stop. God knows how many other gun shops carry it,”

The life-size target called “Crazy Bones” appears to have been removed from the Thompson Target website.

“That leads me to believe they know it is controversial,” Walid said.

Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for CAIR National, said he knows of many incidents over the years involving stereotypes of Muslim attire, including one last July by the U.S. Navy.

“There was a case with a military training facility in southern Virginia that had a target of a woman wearing a hijab. They removed it,” Hooper said.

CAIR called the shooting target of the woman with a religious head scarf offensive and a counterproductive message for Navy SEAL trainees who could be deployed to Muslim-majority nations.

Hooper is curious to see if Thompson Target takes any action.

“I doubt they will,” he said. “We’ve had people tell us they are glad we let them know about something so they can go and buy it. Just wade into the cesspool of the Internet and you see a lot.”

The owner of Target Sports, Royal Oak, couldn’t be reached for comment. In addition to stopping sales of the shooting target, he also recently changed a store policy on renting weapons after there were two suicides and one attempted suicide at the Woodward Avenue location in a four-month period.

All of the individuals went to the business by themselves and rented firearms. In response, the store no longer rents to people who come in alone. Since 2001, there have been five suicides and two attempted suicides at Target Sports, which is not affiliated with the retailer Target Corp.